CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nueces County commissioners called a special meeting Thursday over the possible closure of CHRISTUS Spohn's Emergency Room Medicine Residency Program.
Hospital officials made the decision last week, saying they will offer impacted faculty and staff support, including helping them finding other open jobs within the hospital system.
Since last week’s decision, though, thousands have signed a petition asking the hospital to reconsider its decision and even taking its concerns before the Corpus Christi City Council on Tuesday, and now, they’re taking their fight to the county.
"The program was needed in 2007 when there were three residency programs,” said CHRISTUS Spohn Health System CEO Dom Dominguez. “(There are) 18 now. Those resources are needed in other areas. We’ll continue to resource every other department: the ER, radiology, anesthesia, pathology, and will continue to recruit into the community the specialties I mentioned and others."
The program has been part of CHRISTUS Spohn since 2007 and has graduated more than 120 physicians.
The hospital said in a release this week that its decision to close the program comes from a lack of sustainability, stating, in part:
"It was ultimately determined that our ability to sustain this program for the long-term future was limited."
But Thursday, Spohn doctors went before before county commissioners with their concerns that closing the program could further strain already-long wait times.
"I will never forget the first day I worked there with no residents, there were 17 charts in the rack which means 17 patients that had been waiting all night to be seen, and the first 5 or 6 I saw were deathly ill,” said John Herrrick DO. “Low blood pressure, heart rates of 150, and there’s no way they should have been waiting with those wait times. With the residents, we’ve solved that. We solved that the day the residency moved from Memorial to Shoreline. The metrics decreased greatly.”
Commissioners asked Dominguez Thursday to speak with them and other members of the medical community as part of a newly formed committee.
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